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Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Clifftops

I am watching a world create cliffs
when they find me: jagged grey cliffs towering above an ocean. The
water is filled with datastreams, the pounding of waves on rock
powering the ancient technologies that are building landmasses on a
world. The air smells of fresh-cut grass, and will for some centuries
yet as terraforming engines, applications and linkages piece
themselves together into the most efficient forms.

I am seeing it all from white cliffs
further away, among the first geological features the world had of
stone, and in the centre of them the various strata spell out the
names of friends I have had in languages long dead and gone. It is my
only indulgence, and I doubt it will last. But that feels as if it is
for the best, that the past is buried under changes. That we move on.
That we can pretend to move on.

The human simply steps out of the air
beside me. No spaceship, no disruption-engine. Just the raw power of
the human mind to move her across light years from Braden’s World,
the closest inhabited system. She is tall, skin shifting white to
blend into the cliffs, air and nutrients brought from Braden’s
World in a shimmering field about her body.

“Our seers did not believe it to be
real when they found this place.” Her voice is deep and sure,
pressing against my mind. “The technologies here are alien to us:
alive, dead, aware. Too many to count, all building a world at the
very edges of our reach. An akashic record filled with selves
waiting to be born.”

“I know how they feel. I felt the
same for a long time on the first Arc-World I visited.”

“There are more.”

“There are six; one was destroyed
long ago and rebuilt; this will be the seventh. The others were
approaching hard limits as to what could be changed, could be added,
could be adapted. This one won’t have those.”

She moves closer, slowly, to circle me.
She is human. I am not, a cylindrical shape of treads, with limbs and
sensors inside my chassis. I was human once, before becoming a
transfer, being placed inside this body. Humanity has destroyed
itself four times, in wars or by their own hand, during my long life.
In each, the arc-worlds rebooted the species, made a new Earth. That
is what the Arc-Worlds are for and they are hidden even from the
alien hingari. I think.

“I am Shino,” she says. “I do not
know what you are. Your mind feels human, but – very strange.”

“I’m Dar.” It’s been so long
since I’ve said my name that it takes a moment to recall it. I
alter my chassis a little, shifting apps and linkages until I have a
viewscreen again, flick it on so she can see a human face in it.
“This is how my face would have looked if I was thirty or so.”

“You are not an alien.”

“No. What do you know of them?”

“We call them hingari, and they exist
in the alpha-space, in the pathways that allow for true astral
transit past the speed of light. They will not let us pass them in
it, not let us explore beyond them to the rest of the universe. There
has been talk of war, a seeking for weapons. Stories about worlds
filled with ruins. And then the seers found this.”

“I didn’t mean for it to be found;
I figured it was a possibility. I’m a mechanic: I’m good with
tech, even the organic kind, but you’ve developed purely mental
abilities and I had no way of being certain I could hide this from
you.”

“Did you want to?”

I smile at that, rueful and tired.
“Some days I don’t know.”

“Oh.” Shino studies me. “You are
shielded from me. Even the GESTALT could not break your shielding, I
think, if it still existed. We were forced to destroy the Whole-Mind.
It was us and not us, too big to think of small things.”

“I know. Before you one group mind
detonated itself. I was – pleased you avoided that.”

“Before us.” She stares down at the
white cliffs under us, out at the grey ones being made. “These
Arc-Worlds have been used, then.”

“Four times that I have been privy
to.” She lets out a hiss of shock. “Mine was technology built
from the world, taking stone and iron, electricity and gravity,
forging tools out of that. I called it normal, of course, because for
me it was. In one, organic technology existed but their craft were no
match for the hingari. The third was the group mind that detonated
itself, the fourth wiped themselves out in wars long before they left
Earth. And now you.”

“And you have done nothing?”

“I have waited to be found. I have
hidden myself, the Arc-Worlds. What they mean. The Arc-Worlds are
mostly automated: they would run just fine without me, but wouldn’t
learn as quickly from each new embodiment of humanity. I am sure
there are some out there hidden even from these worlds, safeguards
piled upon safeguards, hope stacked up against despair.” I extend a
limb from my chassis to gently brush the white cliffs. “I am a
mechanic, Shino. I was born one, I have been one, and I can fix
things. People are not things. If I interfered, if I did things, or
taught them –” I shake my head in the viewscreen. “There is no
way that ends well. Better to be alone than be a god.”

“What do you wait for?” she says,
barely a whisper of thought.

“I don’t know. The Arc-Worlds need
me a little. I think they like the company, so stuff breaks down for
me to fix. The hingari have always been called that, in every form of
humanity I know of. I suppose I’m waiting to see what happens if we
do move beyond them. If we find out what they are. I have a few
theories but no way to prove any. At least not without risking the
Arc-Worlds being noticed by them.”

“You have wisdom we could use, then.”

I snort; it startles her a little. “No.
Most of the technology in the arc-worlds isn’t anything you could
use, let alone understand. I
don’t understand over half of it, and I’ve been studying and
learning it for a long time. You’ve
built an entire civilization based around the human mind. Everything
I could show you would just limit what you can become on your own.”

“And if we force
the issue?”

I
blink. “You could try;
others have.”

“So you will just
sit here and be a second chance, over and over, never helping?”

I move
toward her; Shino steps back. “What do you think being found is,
if not a helping?” I snap. “I have seen humanity die out four
times, Shino. Four. I don’t know how often it happened before I
ended up on the Arc-Worlds, how often we’ve done this dance of
discovery and forgetting. The Arc-Worlds aren’t a second chance at
all but a whole new throw of the dice. Knowing this, knowing that
every time humanity has been rebooted it has failed, that is the
lesson. That is the message of this place. To be better, to do
better.” I move back.
“Think about it: you’ve beaten your own Gestalt, walk to to other
worlds with a thought.”

“The hingari are
still our jailers.”

“Then you’ve
made your choice. You can leave now.”

For a moment a
storm gathers about her and the white cliffs shudder under me, but
the moment passes as she vanishes a moment later.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”